cantonese slang and underworld secret phases 廣東濁語和黑社會暗號

Chinese has many dialects. Because of Mao's decreed that Mandarin is to be a national language everyone in China can speak Mandarin which also is referred to as (普通話) common language. In the name of progress of efficiency Mao also forced the people to use the simplified written language in which many words he himself designed.


Of course the regional dialects still exist and are used by the local people, but increasingly Mandarin is the default daily spoken language. Cantonese is the dialect of the Guangdong province. Like most Chinese dialects the formal written construct is largely the same as it would be for a Mandarin speaking person. However in daily conversational language Cantonese is probably the most colorful amongst the Chinese dialects in which slang is often used to its greatest impact. The study of Cantonese slang would yield a great deal more on the study of the culture, custom, the society, and the colorful history of the region. I remember coming across an Youtube video of a Caucasian man speaks perfect and fluent Cantonese including the use of non-offensive slang. If I were to close my eyes I would have no idea he is not a Hong Kong born Chinese. It turned out he is a Chinese linguistic scholar (in Hong Kong U if memory serves) who specialize in Cantonese. Yet he was not native born but live there probably since youth.

I left Hong Kong as a young adult. After decades of disuse my command of Cantonese had became rusty at best. I had trouble constructing even simple conversational sentences. Starting a few years ago I begun my yearly return to the city and my command of the language returned rapidly. It is like riding a bicycle or swimming. Very often the local residents are surprised at my fluency because they can spot that I look nothing like native.

My command of the written language is a different matter. I struggle now even with the most common words these days. Between relying on a Chinese writing pen pad and translation search on the web I managed to write what I want. In my translation search I came across this hidden treasure of an extensive compilation of Cantonese slang 濁語. There is also a much smaller document of underworld secret phases 黑社會暗號compiled by Hong Kong Police for training purpose.

Cantonese slang is used in daily conversation. In Cantonese it is called 濁語, translated as murk phases. Some that are less offensive is used regularly in popular media like radio, TV, and printed media.

Unless you have some interest in the regional history, folk and sub culture, and custom it may not be very interesting. You should find a lot of entries fascinating if you have some working knowledge of the dialect, like the culture, and better if you ever spend some time living there. You would also find that many idioms are very similar to those in Western cultures. The compilation of the slang currently has 7660 entries. Even for someone lived in the former colony a long time there are some that he/she has never heard of, or know of the true underlying origin.

Please be warned some entries may be offensive to some.

the compilation of Cantonese slang

What is worth noting is some of the words in slang has no written words. Most do but some less common one even born Hong Kong residents don't know how to write them.
It is unclear who own this compilation. Here is the URL which only tell you it is stored on a Google storage.

https://sites.google.com/site/hkcantonesedict/home

The underworld secret phases 黑社會暗號 is a much smaller compilation which consists of 3 pages. No doubt the list is sorely incomplete especially for used as a police academy training material.
the compilation of Hong Kong underworld secret phases

Update - May 22, 14:
I tried to find the video of the Hong Kong linguist scholar speaking fluent Cantonese to no avail. Instead I found this delivery of what appears to be a TV Op-ed in Mandarin that is equally impressive.